The Star Wars Diorama Workshop, a fixture at Star Wars Celebration events since 2002, is celebrating its tenth anniversary by producing the largest ever diorama display featuring a Return to Tatooine. But rather than just building a Mos Eisley diorama like a decade ago, this year’s version will feature the entire planet spread out over 400 linear feet of tables, and covering both the original and prequel trilogies.

Once again, Frank Diorio and his hardworking crew are soliciting fellow fans to send in Tatooine-related figures, ships, or creatures, or a contribution to help buy the necessary total so that every youngster who takes part in building the diorama will be able to take home his or her piece plus at least one accompanying toy.

“My staff and I have gotten the ball rolling with 240 figures, beasts, and ships from our own collections or purchased on eBay,” Diorio said. “And even with Hasbro’s generous donation of additional toys, we fear that because of the massive size of the diorama, the 400 to 500 figures we usually accumulate won’t even cover half the number that we need.”

The Diorama Workshop’s goal is to collect and buy 2,000 Star Wars toys, all of which will be given to young diorama builders on the last day of the show. If you have toys to donate, you can bring them to the Workshop at Celebration or send them in advance no later than Aug. 19 to:

Daniel “Julius Marx” Pickett has been around toys his whole life. The first line he ever collected was Mego’s World’s Greatest Super Heroes line back in the 70s. He has been surrounded by collectables ever since.
In 1999 he was confounded by a lack of information and news about some of his favorite toy lines he was collecting. Since he couldn’t find the information he decided to pursue it himself thinking other people might also be interested in the same news. He started writing a weekly column on the toy industry and action figure for a toy news site and in a years time he tripled the sites daily traffic with his updates, reviews and product features.
He built relationships with every major toy manufacturer and many sculptors, painters and mold makers. He grew his hobby into a world wide expertise that the industry has embraced.
In 2004 he teamed up with his toy buddy Jason “ToyOtter” Geyer and they created their own website www.ActionFigureInsider.com.
Daniel has been quoted in both industry and mass media press outlets. Over the years Daniel and AFi have been sought out as experts in the field. Daniel was regularly featured on “Attack of the Show” on the G4 network as the primary contributor to their “Mint On Card” segment, and our front page has been linked to from USA Today’s
“Pop Candy” Blog twice. Daniel’s content has also been featured on MSNBC.com,
Wired.com, Fark.com, Boing-Boing, Gizmodo.com, Ain’t It Cool News, the Official
Star Wars blog, Geekologie, G4, CNet and Toy Fare magazine, among many
others. He has consulted on toy lines, books, documentaries and TV shows.
But all of that really just sounds snooty and “tootin’ his own horn” – the long and short of it is that Daniel loves toys and he LOVES talking about them.